


To Try

by Runeless



Category: Super Smash Brothers
Genre: Caring, Darkness, Divinity, Gods, Platonic Relationships, Trying, coming to terms, light - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 10:38:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18030155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runeless/pseuds/Runeless
Summary: It's hard for Witches and Goddesses both, to care- but you have to try.  That's the difference between them and Galeem and Dharkon; they try.(To care, or not to care, and darkness and light.)





	To Try

By dumb luck, Kirby manages to pick them up. Bayonetta and Palutena- the latter still guiding her sons even as Kirby picks her up, at least until Galeem's blast wipes them out- are on the little pink one's star, just as it blinks out of existence, timed perfectly so that, as all the universe falls, the three of them are not in it.

 

They blink back into reality, the star shatters, carrying two more passengers than expected, and Palutena and Bayonetta land none too gently in this universe's version of Skyworld, as Kirby falls onto a hilltop far away.

 

-

 

Bayonetta doesn't really want to be here. Skyworld is not her style, and is as far from her aesthetic as it is imaginable to be. Palutena fled the moment they impacted, her human form shredding as she ran- not that Bayonetta was particularly surprised. She didn't need glasses to see a thing of light's true form, and Palutena's true form is just eyes and fire and not a drop of green.

 

This Skyworld has survived semi-intact; some of Palutena's centurions and soldiers, who apparently really _do_ look semi-human, or at least, in a caricature form. They are nervous around her, but seem focused primarily on... preparing? They look like they are getting ready for battle.

 

Hmm. Curious, Bayonetta descends into the bowels of this place, to question its Queen.

 

Down she went, hunting down what turned out to be... a kitchen? Curiously mundane, she'd expected Palutena on a throne. The flailing abomination of fire and eyes shivering in the corner is unmistakable, however, and she jumps when Bayonetta arrives.

 

“ Oh, uh, hello!” it tries to say, in the sugar-sweet of Palutena. “ I'm afraid I'm not really in the best mood or ability for company right now...”

 

“ What are you soldiers preparing for?” Bayonetta says instead, ignoring its futile attempts to whine. She's dealt with enough Angels before to be bored already with this conversation. She's going to have to kill everyone here, she just knows it; she's willing to bet that Palutena's ready to bow down to Galeem. It is in the nature of light to serve a hierarchy, as far as Bayonetta can tell.

 

But then Palutena surprises her.

 

“ What else? To save them,” she says from fifteen mouths, as if it should be obvious. “ Some of my worshippers are still beneath us, our presence in this world has changed things- my people are still here. I will defend them until the last.”

 

“ Really?” Bayonetta says, quirking an eyebrow. “ Some of your worshippers made it?”

 

“ Yes,” the goddess says, some of her eyes turning to the witch as a multitude of her hands crawl along the floor. This one doesn't have feet, apparently. Just more hands. “ Some side effect of my survival, I guess. I'm... I'm going to save them. Or at least give them a chance to run, before we fall.”

 

“ Run to where?” Bayonetta asks.

 

“ I have... no idea,” Palutena says, quietly. “ I can't stop him. He's going to kill all of my soldiers, all of my angels, and then I will be taken, the way he took my sons. And then he will kill all my people. But I have to try to... to buy them time.”

 

Bayonetta's taken aback by that. Her experience with gods has taught her that they care about themselves first and foremost, and Palutena has never done anything to convince Bayonetta she's any different. She's silly and flighty and arrogant. But right now, she seems... sad, and determined.

 

“ Why not just run?” the witch offers. “ You could probably make it.”

 

And she is greeted with a horde of eyes turning on her and looking _down_ on her, looking at her with _contempt_. “ Never,” the goddess whispers. “ I am not like the others. I do not abandon my duties, no matter the cost. My people first.”

 

...Bayonetta doesn't know what to do with that. She's never even _heard_ of anything like this before. A god of light, that wants to save people...

 

“ Not like the others? You're exactly like the others,” Bayonetta says. She's too thrown off by the entire situation to be tactful, and never gave too much thought to giving Heaven's beasts some lip. Paradiso needed the puncturing. “ I've seen you interact with your angel. You're arrogant, condescending- don't care too much for what you put him through...”

 

“ True,” Palutena admits quietly, which is not quite the indignant roar or proclamation of superiority the witch was expecting. “ I try not to, you know. It's so easy, it's so _easy_ , to fall into the trap. To be like the other gods. To be superior... but you have to earn it. I try. I try to be better.”

 

She shakes and trembles, and her voices take on horror-tinged desperation. She is scared, and Bayonetta realizes she has _never_ heard a beast of Paradiso be _afraid_ , except when Bayonetta herself is doing the scaring. “ And now Galeem is coming to kill my people, and I am so _scared_ , I do not want to be a puppet, I do not want to serve it, but... they pray to me. They pray for my protection. I have to fight for them. I have to. I'm not like the others. I do what I can. I try.”

 

Bayonetta is left speechless. Palutena wants to do right. This... abomination before her, this shivering thing of light and eyes and fire, it wants to do right, it wants to help. Palutena is the first thing of light Bayonetta has ever met that wants to _help_ , she is not perfect but she strives desperately to become.

 

Light that wants to help. The witch doesn't know what to do with that. She has never considered herself very moral, as a person, prefers sex and drugs and rock 'n roll, to steal a line from a Meatloaf song. She loves Jeanne and would never betray her, and she has friends she loves- whom she would defend unto death, and beyond- but morals? She kills angels because they're bastards, and she has to, and it's fun, but the fact they hurt people is really pretty far down her list. People don't much like witches, so she doesn't pay much attention to them in return.

 

It occurs to her- and it burns, to know this- that this... this _goddess_ is a better person than she is, and that hurts her somewhere inside, where she had never expected to be wounded. She had always comfortably known she was a better person than any of the light's bastard scions. She isn't that moral, but she doesn't have to be, because angels are so much worse that opposing them makes her a saint all by itself. Morality by convenience, and everyone wants to believe they are a good person, or at least, good enough.

 

But... maybe it takes _more_. Maybe... maybe she can't rest on her laurels, in that regard. Does she care to be moral? Does she _care_? Your average person was an idiot, and didn't deserve what they had.

 

But these people- these fellow brawlers- they were better than that. A lot of people were better than that, maybe, if she'd give them the chance...

 

...Does she want to? Does she _care_?

 

...No. She doesn't care.

 

But she wants to. She wants to care. She wants to try, at least. If this... thing can try, if Palutena can try, then Bayonetta can, too.

 

Is it enough? Somewhere, her empathy, a withered and abused thing, uses all of its strength to move her lips, and it gets her to say...

 

“ I'll defend you.”

 

She says it, her empathy was strong enough for that, even though it comes out barely above a whisper. She's more surprised than anyone in the room that she's said it, even as all of Palutena's seventy-seven eyes quirk eyebrows of flame, as the great not-human thing cocks its head to look at her. Still Bayonetta is more surprised, because she had not realized it _would_ be enough, not to care but to _want_ to care. Her empathy had been beaten down by the witches' hatred of her hybrid heritage, by lack of love and good things. She owes what care she has to Rodan, to Jeanne, to Luka and her few friends.

 

...But she had enough to say she'd defend them, and her pride won't let her back down, now that she's said it- and her pride is a mighty beast indeed, well fed. It takes over for the small empathy in her, and so she says, louder, loud as all get-out, cocky and swaggering, “ Get your people down below. I'll defend Skyworld, and your followers. They won't get in.”

 

There is a pause, and then, quietly, disbelieving, from only a single mouth, Palutena asks, “ Really?”

 

Bayonetta nods her head. “ I think this has taken less out of me than it did you- and I was always good at killing the children of the light, no offense intended. You and yours will see tomorrow.”

 

There is another pause, and then something drips out of the eyes before her. Something like gold, but far more precious. Tears.

 

Palutena is _crying_.

 

“ Thank you,” she burbles from a dozen mouths. She's sobbing openly now, the drops sizzling on the marble as they hit. “ I... I don't know what to say...”

 

Neither does Bayonetta. Gratitude is so rarely given to her that the gift is something she fumbles; no one ever _thanks_ her, no one ever cries in joy and relief that she is present. But she hates feeling awkward, and her pride is still strong in her, so with confidence she does not feel, she says, “ Hey, don't get all weepy on me now! I hate crying. Just get them down here, and I'll get up there and keep it safe. We're some of the only ones left, darling, we might as well get our business on here.”

 

And with that, she strides out, as Palutena cries, as a witch goes to save a goddess and her angels, and feel all kinds of weird about it.

 

The battle is almost a relief, fighting light-cloned puppets of her fellow warriors. This she gets- fighting, and death, and warring on light. The darkness is triumphant, as it always is in Bayonetta's capable hands, though her demons laugh in amusement at her decision. ( It ends with her killing angels, so they don't really mind.) The entire time, her mind is on other things- on Jeanne, who she thinks will approve, because Jeanne always wants her to do more. On Rodan, and what would he think? Highest archangel, then highest archdevil, and all the other things he has been, something between a father-figure and a best friend and a merchant and an enemy, all at once. A complicated man of complicated thoughts; she's not sure what he'd think. Maybe he'd approve. She always suspected him of greater kindness than he showed.

 

She knows Luka would approve. He has an altruistic streak in him a mile wide. She wonders what that will be like, now that she has apparently chosen this- that she chooses to _care_ \- what will that be like? To try, and to be concerned with others... More vulnerable, she knows that on instinct. To have a heart is to have something to break. To care is to allow oneself vulnerability. But to choose between being vulnerable and letting Palutena's light die alone, to be so stonehearted that she could walk away from the only light she has ever seen that wants to help, when she saw how scared it was, how alone...

 

She'd rather be the kind of person who gets hurt than the kind who could walk away. It would kill something in her, she thinks, to walk away like that. It would poison every relationship she has, to know she could do something like that, to know she could choose not to _care_ like that. But this decision, this one will stick to her like her shadow, always there, always comforting, to know she did not walk away, that she at least _wants_ to care, she wants to try, and it's enough.

 

As she reloads after the fight, she thinks that's a fine thing to know about herself.

 

-

 

Palutena is wearing her human skin when they meet again. She's still crying a little, but the liquid is now salt water, rather than molten divinity masquerading as gold; her eyes are puffy, and there are only two of them now. Her hair is green. She seems... awkward.

 

“ I... thank you,” she says again. Bayonetta is still as awkward with it as she was the first time, so shrugs it off.

 

“ Eh, no big,” she says, and changes the subject. “ I see you're back to your old costume.”

 

Palutena nods. “ Does that... offend you? I don't want to cause alarm, and I'm not really hiding what I am- especially not from you, that'd be stupid! But I just... I like... looking like this.”

 

She trails off at the end, looks away- seems almost... afraid? The look is the way Bayonetta once looked, when she was a little girl named Cereza, and she had to defend herself to those who sought only to hurt her. Bayonetta realizes with a start that Palutena is afraid of what she'll say, afraid she will saying something cutting, something hurtful, something mocking. She realizes that her opinion _matters_ to the goddess now, and that the goddess feels she does not quite measure up.

 

The feeling is horribly familiar. There is a reason Bayonetta does not call herself Cereza these days, a reason past amnesia, and the feeling of being afraid of another's words is part of that. She knows that look. She would not have anyone else wear it, it is too cruel to contemplate; and she feels protective of Palutena, now that she wears that face.

 

So she is, for the first time in her entire life, careful with her next few words.

 

“ I get that,” she says, a little too casually- but she is bad yet at being careful with her words, she can be forgiven a little stumble in the execution. “ It's like having a favorite t-shirt. Nothing wrong with that.”

 

Palutena's bright smile is all the reward she needs, reassures her that it was the right thing to say, and do. “ Y-yeah! And I do so love green, ironically enough.”

 

Bayonetta chuckles at that; her true form has no green, has every color under the rainbow but that one. “ I think it looks lovely.”

 

Palutena gives her a small smile, then sighs. “ So, what's our next move? I must confess, I've got some ideas, but I'd love to hear what you're thinking.”

 

Despite the goddess' words, Bayonetta is of no use to the war council that follows. She is a solo practitioner, her war has always been fought alone, and she has no idea how to command an army in any effective way. Palutena ends up making all the real decisions, with Bayonetta by her side offering encouragement as best she can, since she doesn't know what to do.

 

But Palutena never presumes to command the witch, and seems grateful for her presence, and it is enough.

 

-

 

They expand, slowly, bringing in new people as they go, setting them free. Kirby they meet, and they're all glad the little weirdo made it; he's great, neither light nor dark, but feels older than either. Chaos, perhaps, the way Loki was. He seems like Loki in his own way; tremendous power, but focused on his own goals, not a lord nor master of anyone he meets. Bayonetta rather likes him.

 

Others are saved. The brothers, who are heroic and strong, and polite to boot; they both take off their hats in their presence, an amusing bit of theater. A half-dragon woman, whom Bayonetta rather likes, if only because watching her body warp and shift is so absurdly terrible, and seems to give Palutena fits when she sees it. She has fun with Link, flirting with him as he flirts back; he is the only man she's ever met who seems to get the joke, who sees the farce behind what she does and plays along for fun, with no expectations laid upon her. Zelda's lucky to have him working for her.

 

Speaking of her, the wise princess comes along eventually, rescued by Mario and Luigi in a raid (apparently the two brothers just can't help but stumble upon princesses in need), and she has that inner conflict that has always defined her, in Bayonetta's eyes, that feeling she is not one thing or another and wishes desperately it wasn't so. Palutena sees it, too.

 

“ She's trapped,” the goddess offers to Bayonetta, at one point, seeing her gaze on the princess. Palutena is with her often these days, and Bayonetta is glad for it; she's grown fond of the little green goddess. “ She's light and dark both, and while she knows how to be one or the other, she doesn't know how to be both.”

 

“ Shame,” Bayonetta says, then thinks to herself for a moment. “ Perhaps we should teach her. It's not so hard, is it?”

 

And Palutena grins at her, and the witch feels clever for having said it. They talk to Zelda, in private, and perhaps it helps; they are in the middle of a war, right now, but maybe later it will give the princess some peace. The Hyrulians always come in so many forms, so many faces, so many timelines; some dissociation of identity is, perhaps, to be expected. Link is grateful, at least.

 

Others come whom she does not know, newcomers. A sweet little dog girl, a terrible dragon thing, a crocodile king; but it's the Belmonts who she finds most fun. Both are concerned for her, when they hear of her powers and their cost, and both offer to set her free; when she laughs and says no, they do not rant of her unholiness but tell her to keep them in mind, and that if she gets lost in hell they will go save her. She's touched, though she does her best not to show it; Palutena needles her for it a little bit, the teasing a little awkward, but she has never been teased in a friendly way before, and she finds she sort of enjoys it. It's different, at least. Like a fond irritation.

 

The Belmonts seem grateful for her support in battle, admiring her prowess, and tell tales of their own world's darkness: of the witches of their homeland, who will end up mixing their blood with the Belmonts, of the redemption of a Church that, in the fullness of time, will give up the weight of ignorance and embrace wisdom. Of vampires who help, of demons who assist.

 

They tell tales of a Light that Bayonetta knows not, because it is not wrapped up in Jubileus or dreams of power, but hopes for redemption and love in all things, of a God willing to sacrifice Himself- or part of Himself, anyway, she's not really sure how that works- rather than people, whose angels are not beasts. The religion is nearly the same as one from her home, but with more focus on the debts of the divine to the mortals, rather than the other way around.

 

She doesn't really believe it- it sounds like a fantasy, like people's hopes and dreams twisted into a mythology- but she likes the idea of it, of Light that does not demand, but gives. And their powers are real enough, the crucifixes and holy water that banish and burn, and the lashing whip, which does so much more than it should. Palutena approves of them wholeheartedly, and they salute her as kin of their own God.

 

They're alright, Bayonetta guesses. Proof that she made the right decision, at any rate.

 

-

 

Pit speaks to her once, in quiet. He doesn't like her, and admits to her that he probably never will, which is fair enough; their personalities are too different. He asks not for anything for himself, but for his creator; and what he asks surprises Bayonetta, and touches her.

 

“ Be gentle with her,” he asks. “ You matter to her more than you think.”

 

Taken a little aback, she asks, “ She's not... in love with me, is she? Because I already have Jeanne and I'm not much for sharing-”

 

“ No, it's not that,” Pit says, relieving a tension in her gut she'd been unaware of feeling until just then. “ You... she seeks your approval, you know. She respects you so much. Ever since you saved her, she's felt this way about you. I guess the closest thing is like, she thinks of you like an older sister? She wants you to like her. She wants you to think well of her. She worries she's going to lose your respect. She thinks you're amazing, and worries she doesn't measure up.”

 

That pulls her up short. She's never been anyone's anything quite like that before. Rodan is the closest thing to family she has.

 

Hmm.

 

“ I'll be gentle,” she says. She doesn't like Pit, but she does like Palutena, and this answers some questions. “ And for what it's worth, I think she's pretty great.”

 

“ Tell her, not me,” he says, but the suggestion is genuine, and he smiles at her. “ And thanks.”

 

They never do like each other, but they come to terms.

 

( Dark Pit is awesome, though.)

 

-

 

Galeem is Jubileus, round two. Round two and worse; it is smarter than Jubileus, and meaner. Jubileus was too arrogant to believe she could lose, even as it began to end; Galeem knows it can lose, and so fights smarter. She'll give Galeem this much credit; it is unconscionably brave, even as the end approaches it fights back.

 

And Dharkon-

 

It feels so familiar. This is something like what she is, this is kin of hers; the power inside it power she draws upon, that flows through her hands and makes her feel so strong, so strong. Is this what Palutena felt, fighting Galeem? To fight something so close in nature, something so much like her-

 

She dances, and she puts a few bullets in Dharkon, and separates the two of them with a bit of distance. Close in nature, yes, but _not_ the same, not the same at all. You can be close as all hell, but there is a difference between them, a difference made more plain when Dharkon takes the opportunity to betray Galeem for a moment's dominance over its ancient enemy. Bayonetta is darkness, too, but with Palutena and the Belmonts- with Pit, even, despite everything- she has come to some kind of understanding, some kind of friendship with at least some of the forces of light, as they have with her.

 

She tries. That is all the difference. She tries.

 

(And when all is said and done, she stays with Palutena, to help her try, too.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> There just weren't any good Bayonetta and Palutena fics exploring their relationship in a non-sexual manner. So I wrote one. It's not great, but I like it.


End file.
